SEO vs Google Ads: How I Decide Where to Spend the Budget
When a business wants more customers from Google, one of the first questions I usually hear is:
“Should we invest in SEO or Google Ads?”
My answer is usually: it depends.
I don’t see SEO and Google Ads as competing strategies. They solve different problems, work on different timelines, and can work very well together.
The real question is not simply SEO vs Google Ads.
It is:
Where can the available marketing budget generate the best business outcome right now?
I’ve had to make this decision myself while working on real projects. One example that stands out is a healthcare education project where the objective wasn’t simply to increase website traffic. The objective was to generate actual paid registrations.
Here’s how I approached it.
A Real Example From One of My Projects
One of the projects I’ve worked on is POCUS.pk, a platform focused on Point-of-Care Ultrasound education and training for healthcare professionals.
The audience is very specific.
We’re not trying to attract everyone searching for ultrasound.
The potential customer might be a doctor looking for:
- POCUS training
- Hands-on ultrasound workshops
- Critical care ultrasound education
- Ultrasound-guided procedures
- POCUS courses in Pakistan
That changes the marketing strategy considerably.
A visitor who searches for something like “POCUS course Pakistan” has a very different intent from someone searching for “what is point of care ultrasound?”
The first person may be much closer to making a purchase.
So rather than measuring success only through traffic, I focused on search intent and conversion potential.
The Problem Wasn’t Simply “We Need More Traffic”
This is something I’ve learned from working on digital marketing projects.
When a business says:
“We need more website traffic.”
I usually ask:
“What do you want that traffic to do?”
For POCUS.pk, the answer was clear:
We needed healthcare professionals to register for training.
That meant the marketing funnel looked more like:
Google/Search → Course page → Understand the offer → Register → Pay
So every SEO decision had to eventually connect to that funnel.
Why I Didn’t Treat Every Keyword Equally
Healthcare education has thousands of possible search terms.
We could create content around broad topics such as:
- What is POCUS?
- What is ultrasound?
- Benefits of ultrasound
- POCUS in emergency medicine
- Lung ultrasound
These topics can attract visitors.
But traffic isn’t automatically valuable.
I was more interested in searches that indicated someone might actually be looking for training.
For example:
POCUS course
POCUS training
POCUS workshop
POCUS course Pakistan
ultrasound training Lahore
These searches have a much stronger commercial connection to the actual product.
That influenced the content and landing-page strategy.
Then I Looked at the Offer
SEO alone isn’t enough.
If someone lands on a page and can’t quickly understand:
- What is the course?
- Who is it for?
- What will they learn?
- When is it happening?
- Where is it happening?
- How much does it cost?
- How do I register?
then getting that visitor through SEO doesn’t necessarily produce a customer.
So I worked on the complete journey rather than looking at rankings in isolation.
The page needed to answer the questions a doctor would naturally have before paying for a course.
The Interesting Part: SEO and Paid Marketing Were Not Separate
This is where I think many businesses make the wrong comparison.
They ask:
“Should we spend money on SEO or Google Ads?”
I prefer asking:
“What can each channel teach us?”
Paid campaigns can provide relatively fast feedback.
You can see which:
- Keywords attract clicks
- Messages generate interest
- Offers get responses
- Landing pages convert
- Audiences respond
SEO takes longer, but it can build an organic acquisition channel around the searches that matter.
So I don’t necessarily see paid advertising as the enemy of SEO.
In some cases, paid campaigns can actually help inform the broader marketing strategy.
What Happened With the POCUS Project?
The objective was to generate paid leads, not vanity metrics.
During the July 5–August 5, 2026 campaign period, the project generated 65 successful paid leads.
For me, this is much more meaningful than saying:
“The website received thousands of impressions.”
Impressions are useful.
Traffic is useful.
Clicks are useful.
But when someone actually takes out their card and pays for a course, that’s a business outcome.
That is the type of result I want to connect marketing activity to.
What This Taught Me About SEO
The biggest lesson wasn’t simply that SEO works.
It was that the type of traffic matters more than the amount of traffic.
You can rank for hundreds of informational keywords and still struggle to generate customers.
Another website might rank for fewer keywords but attract people with strong purchase intent and generate more revenue.
That’s why I don’t judge an SEO campaign only by:
“How many keywords are ranking?”
I want to know:
“Are we becoming more visible for searches that can actually contribute to the business?”
What This Taught Me About Google Ads
The same principle applies to paid search.
A campaign can have:
- Low CPC
- High CTR
- Lots of clicks
and still be unsuccessful.
If the traffic doesn’t convert, the numbers don’t mean much.
For a course business, I would rather have fewer visitors with strong intent than thousands of visitors who are simply researching the subject.
This is why I always try to connect:
Keyword → Landing page → Lead → Payment
instead of stopping at:
Keyword → Click
There Was Another Important Lesson
Sometimes the problem isn’t the marketing channel.
It’s the offer.
Imagine spending Rs. 100,000 on Google Ads and getting plenty of traffic, but the course page doesn’t clearly communicate the value of the training.
Increasing the advertising budget won’t necessarily fix that.
The same applies to SEO.
You can rank a page at the top of Google, but if the visitor doesn’t trust the website or understand the offer, rankings won’t automatically create sales.
This is why I look at the whole funnel.
How This Changed My Thinking About Marketing Budgets
This experience reinforced something I now apply to other projects:
I don’t decide the marketing budget by simply dividing it between SEO, Google Ads and social media.
I start with the business objective.
Then I work backwards.
For example:
Business goal
↓
Target customer
↓
Customer search behaviour
↓
Search intent
↓
Offer
↓
Landing page
↓
SEO / Google Ads
↓
Lead
↓
Customer
↓
Revenue
This approach gives me a much better understanding of where the budget should actually go.
So, Should You Spend More on SEO or Google Ads?
There isn’t one answer that works for every business.
If I need immediate visibility for an offer that people are already searching for, Google Ads may be useful.
If I’m building a long-term source of qualified organic traffic, SEO becomes more important.
If the business has enough search demand, I may use both.
And if the website isn’t converting visitors, I may recommend fixing the website before increasing either budget.
That’s why I don’t like giving businesses a standard:
“70% SEO, 30% Google Ads”
type of formula.
The right allocation depends on the economics of the business.
The Questions I Ask Before Spending the Budget
Before I recommend where to put the money, I want answers to questions like:
1. What are we actually selling?
A Rs. 2,000 product and a Rs. 500,000 service require very different acquisition strategies.
2. Who is the customer?
A marketing strategy should start with the person we’re trying to reach.
3. What are they searching for?
Search behaviour tells us a lot about intent.
4. How quickly do we need results?
A business that needs leads this month has different requirements from one building a two-year organic growth strategy.
5. Can the website convert the traffic?
More traffic won’t solve a conversion problem.
6. What happens after the lead?
A cheap lead isn’t necessarily a good lead.
7. What is the customer worth?
This determines how much we can reasonably spend to acquire them.
My Simple Framework
After working across different digital marketing projects, I’ve come to use a fairly simple framework:
Understand → Research → Prioritize → Execute → Measure → Improve
I don’t start with the channel.
I start with the business problem.
Then I decide which combination of SEO, Google Ads, social media, content and conversion optimization can address it.
SEO and Google Ads Are Tools, Not the Strategy
This is probably the biggest takeaway from my experience.
SEO isn’t the strategy.
Google Ads isn’t the strategy.
They are channels.
The strategy starts with understanding the business and customer.
For one project, Google Ads might be the right place to start.
For another, SEO might be the better long-term investment.
For another, neither will solve the main problem until the website, offer or conversion process is improved.
That’s why I don’t ask:
“SEO or Google Ads?”
I ask:
“What is stopping this business from getting more customers, and which marketing activity can solve that problem most effectively?”
That question usually leads to a much better marketing decision.
About the Author
I’m Muhammad Shahroze Rashid, a digital marketing professional focused on SEO, paid advertising, content marketing and performance-driven digital strategies.
My approach is simple: understand the business first, use data to make decisions, and measure marketing by business outcomes rather than vanity metrics.
I’ve worked across different industries and projects, including healthcare education, e-commerce and lead generation, where I’ve had to balance organic search, paid campaigns, content and conversion optimization.
I share what I learn from those projects here on shahroze.site.